#1 | a way to take back the web if you know me irl you may know me by madhav/meera . and its kinda hard to think of a more unique introduction considering, well. this is like the 3rd one ive written this month.
but welcome to my blog! this is where i write down the thoughts that i find hard to discuss with people i know -- particularly topics that are close and personal to me, or are rather harsh to bring up in daily conversation.
really the first topic i wanted to talk about was the Web Revival project and more importantly -- my experiences with the web.
growing up, my dad had a computer -- one of those large ones that were like as big as your old CRT televisions. he wasnt INCREDIBLY interested in technology but i did grow up around a lot of retro tech.
my first games console was. somehow. a NES. it had one of those 100 games in 1 cartridges and i had a small crt television in my living room that didnt have cable or anything. it just had a vcr + cd input and the console cables, and it kept me company for years
i didnt have my first run in with the web until i was 6, when i was, somehow, given unsupervised access to the web.
though i didnt remember everything, i do remember fondly looking at old html sites, going onto newgrounds( which i SHOULD NOT have been in ) and miniclip, and then the old youtube -- where i'd watch minecraft videos almost day in and day out
and understandably, it was a lot simpler back then. social media wasnt that much of a concern for most people. it was only for the nerds and the people who had the luxury of voicing their thoughts onto the world, and the algorithms that pad out every website today didnt exist back then.
infinite scroll certainly wasnt a thing - and every step you took into the web was personal and deep . each website you found on geocities or myspace was built by hand. even youtube used to have its own customization for channels.
but i dont think anyone realized just how much of a privilege that was -- as silicon valley grew and the net was slowly taken away from us, the people. it was commercialized, made to keep us online. there was a global push by governments to make everything digital -
which meant more participants as companies saw the internet as no longer a collaborative collective platform, but now as a business oppurtunity.
the internet no longer feels personal. theres not a time anymore where i used to eagerly wait at the schoolgate waiting for my mom to pick me up - so i can go home and see what my friends have blogged about.
the internet is now suffocating, especially when platforms thinking about instagram or twitter - knowing platforms are clamping down more and more on individuals - creating bubbles of content where people are fed only certain ideas and nothing else. not the mention the platforms collecting your data like leeches.
not all of us saw the dot com bubble crash. most of the people reading this blog were probably not alive yet -- or simply were too young to know what happened. but the past few years since covid and the advent of AI have felt eeriely similar.
it feels like we're slowly heading to a breaking point again
web3 is here and unfortunately - its heavy handedness is uprooting and affecting many lives. its impossible to say just how much gallons of water consumed or how many acres of forest have been uprooted just to fund the nightmare that is ChatGPT.
it feels rather silly to say it but everyday we stray further from the idea that Tim Burners Lee had when he created the internet - the free exchange of ideas from people across the globe.
we're moving away from socialization and collaboration just because we find it more comforting and easy to find the information out from large datascrapers and ais like chatgpt.
the internet i used to know - where people communicated - and spoke to each other and cared - even though you never met someone face to face - is slowly disappearing. algorithms push for hate speech more than ever simply because it garners the most engagement
and people are made miserable by it.
social media is not for community - its for attention.
predatory algorithms and manufactured trends now dominate these platforms - they're no longer for communal sharing of ideas or for discussions - they're a screaming contest of whos more right or wrong.
these spaces have ALWAYS existed in communities - but web3 amplifies them. because in reality, ragebaiting and shitting on someone will always garner more attention than a well meaning discussion between two poeple, and companies Need attention.
you cannot go on twitter at all now without looking at the egrigious amount of bots and rage accounts that wander around. art communities have been left a husk.
people are more willing to ask grok , than to look up anything on their own. because web3 has consistently provided a platform for, and corporations have given monetary support to people who, by all means, simply want to pollute any actual communal ideas.
however. im not here to just talk about how shit the internet has become.
this website was made primarly as a part of a larger movement - the Web Revival project.
the Web Revival project is a collaborative effort to return to form - for the free exchange of ideas and thoughts, and for the return of web1 - and with it - the values of the old internet.
the movement wants to bring back the humanity in technology - to decentralize the web and to reclaim the web back from the grasp of web3's rogue elements.
however, it is disingenous to say the movement is based on simply one idea. its based off multiple different smaller ideas and groups that share its values of openness and community.
i'll leave further reading down here - as a way to learn about the movement - what you can do to take part - why you should - as well as more thoughts on it.
What is the Web Revival? - an introduction
a website by melon that showcases the movement - its meaning - the ideas behind it and also more further reading!
Make Boring Websites.
a neat little essay about the beauty of creating websites
The Internet Used to Be a Place - Sarah Davis Baker
a video essay on youtube - a love letter to geocities, the old internet and the indie web.
"User Engagement" is code for "Addiction"
an essay against social media - especially its pitfalls and its lows.